


The Thermodynamic Laws of Deceit

by Syberina5



Series: The Universality of Quantum Physics Projects [5]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 10:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16785154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Word Count: 5.315Disclaimer: I may have recently watchedChuck. Also, naming this baby tookforever.Summary:It’s the long way home, but it’shome.Author’s Note: I could really use a beta to bounce some ideas off of because I really want to change the ending of the Hole Events but the first paragraph makes it nigh impossible. I may eventually just end up doing the full scene but… [steps into quantum leap accelerator].





	The Thermodynamic Laws of Deceit

_Before they can talk about it, sort out that they’ll be together when she can end things tactfully, Piz is clinging to her, kissing her, and she doesn’t stop him and Logan—_ God, Logan _—his face stony, walks away and won’t talk to her for a year._

 _Missing him, making due, pretending that yet more near death experiences don’t make her want_ him _, want_ his _comfort, is so much easier_ if she’s too swamped with cases to do anything else. 

Her relationships dwindle down to the few dates she has to go on for cases—because even Piz isn’t willing to put up with how little he sees her—studying with Wallace or Mac when school requires it, and being a ship more or less passing in the night with her father. Logan only breaks his silence to talk to her for a case and she says nothing to him that isn’t strictly on topic. It’s the new status quo.

Given her escapades during that summer internship and in the muck of the Sorokins that next year, the FBI isn’t really interested; she’d proven she thinks she is above the law in their books. During her graduate work at Stanford, it’s the CIA that comes knocking. She’s shown a flair for undercover work, a dedication to character, and a willingness to think outside the box. She’s a bit destructive and doesn’t generally leave aliases alive if she has to inhabit them for more than six months but her family and friends don’t really notice because—to be fair—they have learned to rely on nothing but her workaholism (Wallace and Mac are pretty close now but neither of them would call each other their best friend; they wouldn’t call Veronica their best friend either). Which is for the best because she’d only have to lie to them about why she isn’t coming home, why she rarely calls, why she’s bruised or injured or vanishing after a cryptic text.

Veronica hasn’t anyone else though. She’s personable enough at work, has ended up in a few relationships with a partner or two. She doesn’t really talk to other people. Assets, suspects, trainers, and her coworkers make up 100% of her daily allotment of chatter. But don’t feel bad for her; she doesn’t have time for anything else. In fact, the only reason her relationships last as long as they do is because neither she nor the coworkers she has fallen in with (Noah for now) have the time or inclination to find a more motivating relationship or a more exclusive one. Sure, there are times they have to “date” or “wed” other agents, assets, or suspects for their work and it is not worth the time to find someone who won’t get squeamish. If they both have the time away from work they are together but it isn’t like they communicate in between, like they pine. But it is still nice to have someone who looks you in the eye and knows your actual name while coming. 

Being a CIA agent she travels in fast circles, swaps identities rapidly, and rarely runs into anyone who would look her in the face and say, “In all the gin joints in all the world Veronica Mars walks into mine.”

Her heart stops because that is her actual name not Kara Levain, her cover. To make matters worse it has been _years_ and that voice can still stop her insides and melt them at the same time. The agent is in control though—not the seventeen-year-old, _thank god_ —and turns slowly, coolly, and says, “I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?”

He smirks, jiggles the glass in his hand so the ice clinks and the crystal throws lights on his tux and he looks like something straight out of a Bond movie—granted she does too; Kara is a Bond Girl all the way down to her villainous heart. “Ah, channeling the ice queen I see. You know, freshman year you pulled that on some of the haves and have-nots Lilly would sic you on and every time I saw it I had a hard time sleeping that night.” He chuckles, “When I say hard,” and waggles his brows at her. 

The seventeen-year-old rolls her eyes and looks away disgusted; she’s always been disgusted by the smarm routine he trots out to belittle and mock the hangers-on he wants to get rid of. He hasn’t really turned it on her since high school and it hurts a bit more than her CIA agent shell usually allows. 

“If you’ll pardon me, I’m looking for someone much less likely to proposition a stranger with such _banalities_ ,” she gives him every ounce of the Celeste Kane Distain that has gotten her out of myriad awkward situations and sails away into the crowd. Well, she tries but his soft laughter—the boy she knew after all—and gentle touch on her arm stop her even if they don’t turn her back towards him.

“Don’t be so sure about that, miss. There aren’t a lot of men here who could say no to you.”

His words propel her forwards again because he is one of them. His last words to her were essentially a no. She’d been trying to open the door just a crack, said something about him reaching out to her if he remembered anything else for the case she’d been working on. 

“I can’t think of a single thing I have left to say to you, Veronica,” he’d said, slamming that door and every window in the place shut. 

_…not a single thing… not even good-bye it turned out._

And yet here he is starting a conversation with her in the middle of a ballroom in the mansion of an India drug lord looking to branch into arms. At least she can be sure that Dick isn’t going to be here or Madison Sinclair—Madison Tuler is more likely as the 09 rumor mill had it she’d gotten a little too friendly with the Krishnas in Union Square while at NYU. 

She shakes her head and goes back to scanning the horde of people around her while looking like she suffers from a glittering form of ennui. She cannot afford to get distracted by her past, Logan’s presence or no. The chances of him knowing Laghari are incredibly small. It is much more feasible that he’s traveling through the region—surfing possibly—and as a semi-celebrity had been spotted and invited—even as just a good looking white man who has the money to travel he’d have been seen as a good last minute guest to fill in the dance floor. 

Speaking of, there is one of Laghari’s mistresses dancing with a tall westerner. She groans. Logan would of course stumble into these sorts of situations; it’s like he has no instinct for self-preservation at all. She’d seen him in a fight—more than she cares to remember—and knows that it kicks in when a fist comes flying in his face, but— _for fuck’s sake_ —is that the only thing that does it? (Later it would dawn on her that the only real sense of self-preservation Logan had shown was when it came to her when she was the one hurting the parts of him most people never saw.) 

She’s unusually torn. Normally fairly single-minded about her query—sure, the occasional injustice to a bystander or intended target caused a hiccup or two—she is of two minds about her next step. One is inclined to swan past Logan and throw a come-hither over her shoulder. He’ll follow—curiosity if nothing else—and be well clear of Adah hopefully before Laghari spots them. The other part of her thinks it a great opportunity to find Laghari herself. With one of his current favorites occupied he’d be more likely to be distracted by a pretty piece of flesh himself (and it may take some time and ridiculous shoes but she is well aware that she qualifies). Finally spotting her prey she makes her way across the floor to him—so what if her path takes her past Logan and Adah Nayak.

She doesn’t throw a look back at him, and the sway of her hips is exaggerated for Laghari, not Logan, so it doesn’t exactly follow that just as she arrives at Laghari, his eyes lighting on her, that she feels a hand at the small of her back and hears him say, “Ejaz, if I may, I’d like to introduce an old acquaintance of mine.”

He’s smiling down at her and it’s almost like it’s not his face at all. She suddenly feels much more out of her depth than she has since she finally shook having a handler in her ear all the damn time. “Hello,” she says—she’s a CIA agent; she’s hard to ruffle—“Kara Levain. So nice to meet you.”

“Welcome to my home, Ms. Levain,” he says genuflecting briefly, casually.

“Oh, please you must call me Kara,” she says tilting her head in response.

“Wonderful, and I am Ejaz. Thank you again my friend,” he says to _him_ , “for seeing my guest to the dance floor. A host must see to the needs of as many of his guests as possible.”

Logan laughs and adds, “And Adah always needs to dance.”

“Like petals on the wind,” Laghari returns. 

She does some quick recalculations. Logan knows Laghari, knows him well enough to be trusted to whisk away the mistress at inopportune times. This means that Logan and his past, all the years since she’d last seen him, are now on her recon sheet. There are too many variables if he is in league here. She’s already let him know that she is not here as herself and it is only a matter of time until he starts asking what she is after—he’s never been in denial about her inquisitive nature. Now he cannot be trusted—not that she was going to trust him before but certainly not now—and he needs to be given something feasible as an explanation for her subterfuge. A regular Neptune PI case isn’t going to cut it.

She’s hammered out the broad strokes of her plan and even some of the finer details during the pleasantries, but the rhythm of the party and Logan’s connection to Laghari have somehow gotten her into exactly where she’d hoped to be, making it hours before she finds herself wandering down the deserted patio—her shoes slung over Logan’s shoulder and her arms full of her skirt—as the sun rises and the waves can be heard crashing below. They’re sitting the wide balustrade looking over the water and leaning into each other. It’s as good a time as any. She turns to him and lets the character she’s been playing all night fall from her face, “L—” is all she gets out before his finger is on her lips.

“Hold that thought, bobcat,” he says, his face close enough that even in the breeze she can feel the warmth of his breath. “I’ve got plans for that thought.”

She’d be positive that he meant bedroom thoughts, naked thoughts but the light in his eyes is off. It’s not arousal or amusement or at least not primarily. His smile is all disarming charm and intent but his eyes are clearly telegraphing wariness and a calm, unflinching hardness she’s never truly seen before. So, in response, she smiles and kisses him in the absent, way that used to irritate him—he’d always stop her, pull her back, kiss her “properly”. It still does, it seems, and she watches the old tell of one corner of his mouth turning down. It’s harder than she expects to keep her lips from quirking up. 

Reminding herself that Logan could be a lieutenant of the drug lord she’s investigating, a gun running contact said drug lord is looking to cultivate or even just surf buddies with aforementioned criminal makes keeping her seventeen-year-old self in check much easier. It becomes a bit of a mantra. Whenever Logan is _Logan_ she reminds herself that he basically lives in a _drug lord’s_ ill-gotten manse. 

Because she’s good at her job it’s not long before she basically is as well. Logan makes that much easier. It’s only a little strange because while they sleep in the same bed, while they make out most nights before falling asleep, things are not at all like they were at the Grand. That is, they still haven’t had sex. But that isn’t all. Kissing him is different. His lips feel the same but they don’t move the same, he doesn’t stroke her hair the same. It’s like making out through saran wrap or a mirror, Skype, or something. They touch but it feels off, wrong, and it’s easy to hold back a little, let him decide when to stop, what parts of her to touch. Save on two separate occasions the first week. They are on Laghari’s yacht and despite the role she’s playing, she has dipped into the pool—because only the wealthy can be floating in a sea and still feel the need for a swimming pool. Her face turned to the sun, Logan surprises her enough that he can pull her all the way under before she stops him—the knuckle thrust she nearly lets fly would also break her cover, so she pulls the punch she gives him when they surface. He has his arms around and is backing her into the ledge of the pool, old familiar heat pouring through her—him too if the hot ridge in his trunks is anything to go by—and the lips devouring her are ones she finally recognizes. A half keen slips out before she can stop it because this is what she remembers being so hard to forget. Logan tightens his arms, deepens the kiss, and growls in his throat in response. If the crowd on the deck hadn’t suddenly popped another bottle champagne things could have gotten out of hand—they don’t and it’s not like they’ll talk about it later. The other incident is as different as it can be—she’s sleep addled, and he comes bearing coffee, so of course she snuggles up to take the cup (just the way she likes it, sweet and creamy) while he brushes back her hair, kisses her forehead and holds her just like he has maybe a thousand times in her dreams; she doesn’t even think before she is reaching out and grabbing on to him, looping him to her—but almost more disturbing because it would be so easy in that moment to believe that he’s _Logan_. 

It’s a month in that they are alone, naked—it’s a predictable and long tale—far out in the actual shallow sea that the veil between them drops suddenly and the vague making out they’ve been doing around Laghari’s compound turns into high gear suddenly and they’re both panting and grasping and Logan gasps, “Veronica.”

She fights the urge to stop dead and waits for the passion to curl back but it doesn’t and she knows there isn’t a condom anywhere nearby so she pushes him away, “Logan.”

“Sorry, God. I…” he hums in a way she can tell is him ordering his thoughts, pulling back. “What are you doing here Veronica?”

She laughs, a little annoyed honestly, “Well no one has ever accused you of being too curious, have they?” She pushes away from him and goes to swim back through the water to the rock that has their towels and suits on them, but he pulls her back. “Jesus, Logan it’s been weeks.”

“Yeah and if you think I haven’t been dying to ask where you’d give me a straight answer than you aren’t as smart as you used to be.”

And there’s nothing for it but to quirk her head at him.

“Oh, come off it. I know you’re up to something, _Kara_. So out with it. There’s no flunkies or sycophants and the bug is at least twenty yards away”—which surprises her—“so tell me what’s up because I am not going to be able to arrange this little moment again very easily.”

Her brain is off again, recalculating, reviewing everything she knows about Logan from her updated recon drop, since seeing him again at the party. 

“Were you here when that girl went missing in the city? The British lord’s daughter?” She waits for a response, but there isn’t one. “There’s a few contracted connections but essentially I am working for him, trying to see if she just fell in with the wrong crowd or if it’s likely she was captured, sold off somewhere.”

The beat holds, and she almost asks him what he knows, if he’s seen any human trafficking, but his face hasn’t changed, not a single tick.

“Veronica, if you aren’t honest with me I can’t help you which means you can’t get what you need and go.” His face starts to look a little bit grim, his hands gripping more than before.

“You want me to go? Certainly didn’t seem like it,” she let her voice slip and slide over him as her hands moved to his pecs, “a couple of minutes ago.”

This time he pushes her away and says, “You’re not that dense. You know damn well what’s going on here, and you’re smart enough to know there has to be more beneath the surface, so do not fuck with me on this. You need to get what you’re after and leave.” He’s pulled her up, letting the water take her weight while he bores into her eyes with his own. But his face goes soft, “I don’t know how much longer I can protect you and—”

His forehead rests on hers and she can feel him tremble. It’s certainly not from the cold. “ _Logan_ ,” she goes to stroke a hand down _his_ face.

“Please, Veronica. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” There’s a smile to it but none of the lasciviousness that she’d expect. 

“Logan, I don—”

“Please, _please_ , Veronica. I’ve been working this assignment too long for it to go sideways. If you won’t tell me I’ll have to have you pulled out. I can’t risk it, it’s too—” he cut himself off again.

“Assignment…?”

He laughs, sounding so much like before, “Well, hello there bobcat.” He pulls her just a bit closer and kisses her the light, tender brushes he preferred for greetings. “I can’t tell you who it’s from, but I can tell you that if you don’t play ball here every embassy and consulate in the country will be doing anything it can think of to get you on a military flight back to the States.”

She laughs because it is so ridiculous—Logan a spy—but then again… her life hasn’t exactly turned out the way she planned either. Gleefully she wraps her legs around him, uses the leverage to slip her arms out of his hands and hook them about his neck. “He’s been looking for arms deals.”

“On behalf of terrorists in Pakistan,” he supplies.

“And that doesn’t sound like a harmless hobby,” she adds and he smiles. 

“You wouldn’t know much about harmless hobbies.”

“Shut up,” she whispers and kisses _him_ for real, for the first time since she stumbled upon him in India. Since before he left Neptune, since Piz showed up and ruined what she’d come to think of as their last real chance to make it work. 

Things get dramatic from there. There’s finally sex, there’s castle intrigue, and there’s several cases being built against pleasant guys who do some very bad things. In the end though Logan has the longer relationship, more trust, and so he stays and she goes and every time he surfaces in the same country as her they explode together again—the Noahs of her life be damned. It’s always sudden and brief, and so it’s not that surprising that eventually she’s puking in a bathroom in Kyrgyzstan.

It could be just about anything, and she’s been a lot of things but never stupid, so she knows what it is. The current Noah insists it’s his, that they get married—the open kind of married that a lot of undercover agents have to be to do their jobs. So it’s not a big deal to her—she’s been fake married more times than she can count and this is pretty much the same recipe. He’s not there for most of the pregnancy and she is allowed to do basically anything she wants with their new apartment, so she does. The last thing the CIA wants is agents in the field is has to extract and endanger the covers of so she is desk bound the entire pregnancy. Upside she can do back channel checking under the radar and grill her obstetrician.

By the time Logan surfaces—and she’s good enough at her job that she can arrange to basically be standing there when he does—she’s a baby whale. He panics—barely speaks, can’t bring himself to touch her—and dives back undercover so deep she’s vaguely suspicious that he might have died. She’s essentially a single mom with an amazing nanny. It’s harder to want to be away long enough to do a real mission and she ends up ingratiating herself with the “stay-at-home” wives of some powerful people—Avi is a badass cover. She plays with her son and records gossip and has a care giver that knows more ways to kill an assailant than she does. It’s not like he’s not safe and what spy is going to take their baby on assignment? As far as her marriage is concerned they are roommates which gives her some leverage with the other women—her marriage is worse off than theirs, but she’s not going to be sleeping with their husbands because she’s so small and adorable and their husbands apparently like amazonian assholes.

They run into each other at a party again— _So he’s not dead_ —and this time she is the aggressor. She’s in no mood to give him a compassionate inch after the drama that he’s pulled. By the time she corners him it’s all she can do not the throw the ridiculously expensive canapés at him. It’s fair to say she’s dropped the thin mask she wears to these functions now (more Betty or Freshman Veronica than Amber or Celeste) and her fury is pretty surface level.

He’s got both hands up in defense—he knows better than to think that can hold her off; he’s seen her in action—and looks like he’s about to make his case for discussing it never when she levels a nuclear glare at him.

“No, no, you do not get to talk first here. _You_ are the one who knocked me up,” his eye pop open at that but she is merciless. “ _You_ are the one who hightailed it so quick I couldn’t even tell you. _You_ are the one who hid for so long _I_ gave up trying to find you. _You_ are the one who left me _alone_ to raise a child. And _you_ are the one who used to take digs at me for my avoidance behavior, so you can just cork it mister because I have been pissed at you for years now, and my cup runeth over, you—”

“Oh, thank god,” one of the wives says as she bursts into the conversation and wraps an arm around her. “Please save me from Devril’s uncle. That man has no recognition of how much of his food he spits back out of his mouth. No one ever told him to chew and swallow, I swear. Oh,” she preens when she spots him. “pardon the interruption mister…”

“Appleton, James Appleton,” he offers.

“Hmm, welcome,” the woman purrs when she takes his hand. “And were you two just getting acquainted?”

“No,” he jumps in quickly, “reacquainted. We, ah, used to be friends.”

“Oh,” housewife says, as articulate as ever.

“It was a long time ago,” she supplies trying to account for the animosity that was burbling around them when the woman approached. 

“Well, then lots to catch up on,” she says all but waggling her eyebrows between them—how any of the affairs within this particular circle of friends are kept quite is still a mystery. “Don’t let me keep you,” she purrs again and diddles her fingers in a wave before making a discernable beeline for another one of the wives she likes to prattle with. 

“Subtle,” he says before she can even look back at him. She’s not sure what part of this situation he means. The sarcasm could apply to just about every moment of it. “Look,” he sighs, “you’re right; I freaked. I saw the ring and the… your… you know and I panicked. It didn’t occur to me that you’d be standing there to do anything other than tell me you couldn’t see me again, that it was over and…there was no part of that I was comfortable with: another man’s baby, another man’s ring, another man’s wife. It wasn’t my best moment.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot and stops just shy of running his hands over his head. “Is there someplace we can talk? _Talk_ talk?”

She knows what he means and she has no intention of taking a month to maneuver them into a secure location where they can drop their covers long enough to sort this mess out, at least a little. “Look,” she says producing his phone, “here’s my number.” She types it in and calls herself. “Call me and we’ll get coffee, talk, get _reacquainted._ ” she smirks at him and she steps closer and not deftly returning his phone to his pocket. 

They meet up for coffee and the whole thing seems benign enough when he follows her back for what will look like a tryst but what is really a two-hour fight in her clean room and the only privacy she is sure she has. At the end of it there have been so many insults and events of the past flung about, such a huge amount of words and feelings and not a few tears that she can’t actually remember much except for the overwhelming feelings. One thing stands out Logan’s response to her demand that he tell her if he ever wants anything to do with her, with their son: “I… No? I don’t… I don’t want to fuck it up for you, both of you. If you’re happy, if he’s happy then no. I don’t need him to know me as long as he’s good, you know, happy.”

She’d been so frustrated that it isn’t until later that the full weight of what he’d said, what he feels, hits her. That he’d been so willing to give up what he wanted (he’d eventually spat out that he did want it) to do what was best for a child he had never seen, hadn’t really made any connection with in that moment made him a better parent than her husband had ever been—his interaction was relegated to brief visits to gather her intel, holidays, and the longer vacations between assignments for a grand total of about three weeks a year. 

His mission isn’t a blip and he’s in town for a while, long enough for them to fall back in with each other—to no one’s surprise, or at least it wouldn’t be if anyone had any idea what was really going on between them but of course no one but a couple of the housewives even suspects they’re fucking now let alone that they’d been in and out of relationships for over a decade. His assignment is wrapping up and he’s about to vanish again when she feels that dread clenching inside her again. 

He’s a part of their lives now. Mommy’s friend has hung out on numerous occasions—they really try to avoid names around Avi so as not to confuse him when they change. The thought of him not being there, not tucking their son in or tucking hair behind her ear ever again is…

So she does the most rash thing she can think of and submits her resignation—she’s pretty sure they’ll tell her to stuff it and ask her what it’ll take to get her to stay but at least it opens her options back up. 

“What if we met you somewhere?” she asks in the clean room the day before he’s set to leave—cover still intact.

It’s clear he doesn’t get it, thinks it’s just some rendezvous so he can see Avi, her, when he murmurs— _like he’s afraid he hallucinated it, the idiot_ —“Yeah, yeah,” and his shoulders relax a little. 

“We could try Asia, China, Japan, Korea; neither of us has done much work there. Could be a good place to lay low for a while.”

When he finally picks up on it, it’s like his brain turns off, like he can’t possibly comprehend that she’d want something longer term with her kid’s father, with the man who knows her the best, the one who touches her like she’s never anybody else when it is just the two of them. _Idiot._

He touches her face and looks torn, like he needs to say something but can’t because of where they are which makes no sense because they’re in the clean room, and it’s the most privacy they get. A hand drifts to hers, finds her wedding ring. _Ah._

“There are no delusions there, Logan. Neither of us is under the impression that it’s a love match at this point.”

“But he’s his father,” which is ludicrous because Avi and he can barely have a conversation.

“You’re Avi’s father, you’re his friend, and he has spent more time playing with you during this one assignment than with him _ever._ Logan.” A thought strikes her. “If this… If you don’t want this, us, just say it. I’ve been doing this on my own for a while now. I don’t need a mirage, I’ve already got one of those. Just… tell me what you want, damn it.”

“I don’t want to hurt him. I have wanted you for so long but how many times did we hurt each other? God, I want it but I…”

“Then don’t. Logan it’s going to be hard enough with our careers don’t borrow more fucking trouble than we’ve already got.” She flashes forward to what life they might have, still not quite themselves somewhere away from most of the espionage community and raising a teenager that is both of them combined. “Do you have any idea how much trouble we’re in for when he hits puberty.”

Logan’s eyes get bigger for two beats. “Oh _fuck_.”

“Yeah, so stop freaking out and let’s figure this out because you leave in thirteen hours.”

They do. 

It goes better than they’d planned. They use their own names, Avi’s, in Hollywood and keep their eye on some questionable investors, traffickers, and cults for the same agency—their years of balls-to-the walls missions paying off. For the first time ever her son has a grandfather and Veronica Mars has friends—true friends—who call her by her name. They’re not Mac and Wallace—that ship had drifted too far off shore to be pulled back—but they find her “investigations” charming and their son a riot. At night Veronica gets to kiss their boy, make love to Logan, and dream about having another kid with the man curled around her in bed. 

It’s the long way home, but it’s _home_.


End file.
